I am grateful that KW has built the Sox into a large-market franchise.

But I envy the Twins' ability to develop their own players. It seems like they have been able to withstand virtually every injury by finding internal replacements. They know which prospects to retain and which are expendable. Even their mistakes (letting Ortiz go) don't seem to hurt them.

For instance, how the heck did their scouts know enough to completely rob the Giants - getting a future ace (Liriano) and a closer (Nathan) plus more pitching (Bonzer) for A.J. Pierzynski?

Also, I know they "lucked" into drafting Mauer, who has been far more valuable to them than Prior has been to the Cubs. But something tells me that if they had drafted Prior instead, he'd have won multiple Cy Young awards by now and pitched healthy every year.

The Twins' inexpensive team of largely home-grown position players leads the league in hitting, but they also play great defense (Saturday night was the glaring exception) and play unselfishly. That indicates to me they are getting fantastic coaching in the minors. The Sox have developed some great hitters like Maggs and Lee in the last decade, but they have tended to be selfish at the plate and haven't played great defense.

The bottom line is that I wouldn't trade places with them, but I sure would like for the Sox to be able to build as good of a minor league system as the Twins to go along with their big-market payroll and KW's ability to make great trades for major league players who were developed elsewhere.

So I ask of the experts here - what do the Sox have to do to build/have an organization as solid top to bottom as the Twins (other than throw millions of dollars to steal away their scouts and minor league coaches)?

__________________The universe is the practical joke of the General at the expense of the Particular, quoth Frater Perdurabo, and laughed. The disciples nearest him wept, seeing the Universal Sorrow. Others laughed, seeing the Universal Joke. Others wept. Others laughed. Others wept because they couldn't see the Joke, and others laughed lest they should be thought not to see the Joke. But though FRATER laughed openly, he wept secretly; and really he neither laughed nor wept. Nor did he mean what he said.